Clemson suffers disastrous defeat at Louisville |
This one is gonna sting as March approaches.
An ice-cold shooting effort from deep on Clemson’s end and a season-best effort for the home Louisville Cardinals factored in the Tigers suffering their worst loss of the season by the NCAA’s NET metric, 83-73. The defeat is a third from the NET Quadrant 4 section this campaign, with the Cardinals coming in ranked No. 324 by the metric and improving to 4-23 overall and 2-14 in ACC play Saturday. Clemson (19-8, 11-5 ACC) entered the game regarded as a team in the ‘First Four Out’ of ESPN’s NCAA Tournament bracketology. Brad Brownell’s Tigers hit just 4-of-24 3-point attempts, while allowing the Cardinals to score 20 points over their season average and shoot 51% from the field. "We're a team that usually makes some threes and we didn't make any," Brownell said. "We're not as athletic as some of the teams we play in this league. We have to be tougher and we have to be smarter and we just weren't quite either one tonight. "That's hard because you're going to have nights you don't shoot it. There's just a few questionable shots I thought and I've got to coach that better." The first half was frenetic and featured 13 lead changes. The Cardinals hit six of their first eight shots and went on a 10-0 run to hold a 5-point edge five minutes in. Clemson’s PJ Hall and Brevin Galloway jump-started the Tiger offense, however, combining to score 25 of Clemson’s first 30 points and a Hunter Tyson slam for the next two put the Tigers up by four with five minutes left in the half. Hall picked up his second foul and sat close to three minutes to close first session, where Louisville extended a lead out to its largest then at five points but Chase Hunter answered with a buzzer-beater jumper to make it 39-36 at the break. The Cardinals connected on 50% of their shots overall and from beyond the arc, while Clemson hit just 2-of-11 3-pointers but made 8-of-9 free throws (Louisville was 9-for-9 there in the half). Louisville’s El Ellis topped the 20-point mark early in the second half while Louisville built a lead out to six just over four minutes into the second half. That advantage stretched to eight with after an 8-0 run and a hoop-and-harm 3-point play from a JJ Traynor dunk stretched it to nine points with 14 to go. The 3-point shooting woes continued in the second half for Clemson, which missed its first eight from beyond the arc in the session while Louisville built a double-digit lead. "I've been fighting our guys some -- I love them but there are times when we get in this stretch where we haven't played as well and we just panic a little bit and shoot a few quick threes and we're not showing enough offensive toughness in those situations," Brownell said. "And it's probably especially true on the road when the crowd gets going a little bit -- I know we have a lot of good shooters and try to give them some freedom -- we don't always grind it and I feel that's contributing to some of our offensive struggles." Hall continued to be Clemson’s steady force, however, and a layup cut the edge to single-digits with 5 1/2 minutes to go. As a Louisville scoreless drought lengthened to over four minutes, a Hunter layup made it a 5-point game with under four minutes left. After missing his first six treys of the night, Hunter Tyson knocked down a 3-pointer to make it a 4-point game with just over three to go. Hall missed Clemson’s 18th 3-pointer of the night badly, however, and Louisville’s Brandon Huntley-Hatfield put-back a dunk placed the Cardinals up eight with a minute left. Tyson again answered the bell with a 3-point make and the Tigers forced a turnover on the ensuing possession, but a Chauncey Wiggins shot attempt was blocked and that’s the closest Clemson would get. Hall tied a career-best on the night with 28 points. Louisville's Ellis finished with 28 points as well, capping the scoring by a dunk instead of running out the clock to some ire from the Tigers. "Their athleticism bothered us. We guarded their actions really well and had nine turnovers at the half, but they got by us," Brownell said. "They got by us and got into the rim and then we had some really silly fouls. When they got into the bonus early in both halves...I told our guys at halftime, we're giving them the lead because of the free throws. I thought we played hard. That's why we created some turnovers. Their athleticism beat us to a couple balls and their athleticism got by us and put on our heels on a couple plays. Obviously it's a very disappointing loss." Louisville finished 26-of-28 on free throws. Clemson returns home to face Syracuse for a 7 p.m. tipoff on Wednesday (ACCN).
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